Psychologist and former competitive skater Rachel Ritan knows just how badly hot emotional states like anxiety can affect us. Her research is focused on how we can reignite the compassion that our cool rational selves should be feeling for our hot emotional selves. When you're not in an emotional state at a given time it's nearly impossible to understand its effect on your behavior.
When mild-mannered David Banner gets mad he transforms into the raging Incredible Hulk. Dr Laurie Santos loves this comic book tale - because it reflects real life. Intense things like anger, pain, even hunger, can cause us to act in extreme ways that we might not predict beforehand or forgive afterwards.
When we're in so-called "hot states" we might become a total stranger to ourselves. This can have a serious impact on our happiness, by stopping us properly planning for how we'll react to strong emotions and causing us to be unfairly harsh on our inner Hulks.
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